


A Kindness of Ravens

by kittydesade



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-26
Updated: 2012-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-30 04:12:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mrs. Hudson has always lived on Baker Street, in one form or another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Kindness of Ravens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [melannen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melannen/gifts).



While the Romans laid stone on stone and bordered what they in their arrogance thought of as their kingdom, she oversaw the rebuilding of her city. They'd chased her out years before but only in the one life, her first attempt at humanity to last so long. And it was only a temporary defeat anyway. She watched them rebuild, watched them learn at least a modicum of caution from their previous defeat as they surrounded the city with another stone wall. They were so very fond of the things.

She tipped her head back and laughed, sharp and raucous sounds spilling from her beak. Beneath her perch on the beams of a tavern in the making one of the builders took note and shied a road apple at her, without success.

"Leave be," his companion snapped at him. "It's bad luck to drive away the ravens."

She closed her beak at that and bowed her head. A rare piece of wisdom from the mouth of one of his kind. 

Another century or two and it became common knowledge. Bad luck to drive away the ravens, worse luck to kill them. Throw no stones, raise no hands, give them the bits of food you can spare and treat them with respect for they are the bones of the isles and most particularly of Londinium, or London town as they called it now. And you didn't drive the ravens out of the town, even old Charles knew it, the daft silly bastard. 

They repaid the favor, or maybe by that time it was because they believed as much as the mortal men did, that this was their home. They couldn't allow it to come to harm. Elders taught this to chicks, and the very old sat aloof and reminded the so-called Elders that they'd done well enough without this sprawling city in the middle of things, but it never did any good. So many of them died as a result, enough that she couldn't bring herself to stay by the old palace grounds any longer and enlisted the help of some human hands to make her escape.

They selected others to replace her, in the end. A bit reverent of her age, so much so as to be intimidated, they decided she didn't have to go back to Tower duty and instead secured several younger guardians to make themselves known to the humans. One large black bird looked much like another, even to the Ravensmaster, who always took a short time to be able to tell them apart. He wouldn't miss her much with six new beaks to look after. 

She went down to the Below places for a little while and lost herself around the forgotten and the lost, the people who talked with the rats, from whom she learned all the good gossip. Reconstruction and rationing passed her by; they didn't pay any attention to such things when they were already on short rations. And it was about time she paid her respects to the great beasts that lived here anyways, since there were so few of them from so long ago.

By the time she emerged into the world above again everything was bright and shining and it dizzied her, put her in a foul mood. She took lodgings by the tavern she'd perched on when they first rebuilt her city after she'd razed it, out of protest or nostalgia or some fit of needing to be where she had spent so many years off and on throughout the centuries. Of all things, it was a public house again. One of those reveling in the post-war years when everything was plentiful and manic energy powered the rampant youth. And, she thought, she might get used to the lights and the noise. She did have an appreciation for the shiny, after all. 

But then it was too much noise and too many lights. She got reckless, caught up in the whirlwind of heady emotion, elation and triumph and what-do-we-do-now despair, and then she had lost her way. There was a young man, handsome enough as humans went and since she was human now she got caught up in the fuss over his good looks. He showered her with gifts and attention and she forgot who she was except in the back corners of her mind that now needed a good dusting. When she stood out very still on the green and the wind blew her hair around her face she thought she could remember when the thin strands were feathers, and the feathers had barbs, and she could feel the wind along each shaft. 

By the time she remembered it was far too late. He threw tantrums and shouted and broke things and then sobbed and threatened to do harm to himself if she left, and an hour later he was off to the pub. And when she had her head in her hands and bounced her wedding ring off the wall, and it lay on the ground gleaming up at her, then she remembered. What she was. And how she had come to this.

She kept on as she was, because there wasn't much else for her to do, she'd forgotten the way to change back. But she got her revenge, finally, decades later, when she sat muttering to herself in the tavern that had become a pub that had become a diner or cafe or somesuch thing and feeling very much like the old woman at her wits end she resembled. The young man came up to her with his pale eyes and his inquisitive, sparrow-like manner.

"Could I trouble you for an ashtray?"

It was an excuse, of course. It was an excuse to be clever at her because the silly boy always did need an audience. That was one of the first things she noticed about him. Her people only needed to keep their secrets, hoarded them like pretty stones; they never needed anyone else to know what they kept. Sherlock, dear daft boy that he was, needed to have people around him who appreciated his cleverness. More magpie than sparrow, she decided. 

He took one look at her and guessed her human age, her disposition, what she'd had for breakfast by what she'd had for lunch, the occupation of her husband by a bit of dust on the hem of her dress, and half the cause of her present unhappiness. And yet, in the manner of adults everywhere, he did not deduce who she was. She'd certainly left him enough clues, she thought. And he was willing to believe even in the improbable as long as his calculations and examinations narrowed down the possibilities to a series of known unknowns. It never even crossed his mind that she might be the sort of creature humanity had only touched upon. 

Well, she shouldn't have expected much more than that, clever boy that he was. He was still limited by the boundaries of the world as he knew it, more so than most, in a way. 

She got to stretch for the first time after he dispatched her husband with brutal and cold efficiency, something she had never been able to manage. She got into a flap far too easily, her temper got the better of her, made worse by being stuck in this fleshtrap, as she thought of it on her worse days. After the old bastard was gone, though, it became much more bearable. "Might as well give it a year or two, see how it goes."

Of course, he thought she was talking about the rent. She patted his arm and left him to his dreaming or calculations or whatever it was he did when he stared off into space like that. 

So for a little while it was the two of them, and when she realized he spent far too much time staring and too little time eating she nudged him, under the pretext of rent, to find a mate he could stand. Even if it was just for the money. John was a dear boy, not too bright in some aspects, but he had his feet firm on the ground and knew where his head was at, which was more than she could say for the other lad. 

On the other hand, she hadn't expected him to be quite so head in the clouds as to decide a flight from the roof of a building was a thing to do.

She watched poor John half-march and half-slouch away from the grave without a body, headstone memorializing a living man who, she suspected, wasn't far away. He was both too attached to the few friends he did have and too arrogant or proud to stay away for long. He still needed his audience.

That didn't mean it didn't hurt.

She balled up her hands into tiny fists and thrust them into the pockets of her coat as John finally found her and headed her way. "You're not really dead, young man, and I _will_ take it out of your hide when you turn up," she muttered. 

"What was that?" Offering her his arm, automatically. Oh, dear. 

"Nothing, dear." She tucked her arm through his, patted his hand. "Let's get you back to your flat."


End file.
